{"id":72,"date":"2010-09-21T15:40:53","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T20:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/?p=72"},"modified":"2010-09-21T15:44:20","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T20:44:20","slug":"response-to-felicia-day-on-women-in-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/2010\/09\/21\/response-to-felicia-day-on-women-in-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to Felicia Day – on Women in Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

It all started with this post on Techcrunch\u00a0 Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The\u00a0Men.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and got more out of hand with\u00a0\u00a0all the responses.\u00a0 When I saw this post from Felicia Day Women in Tech<\/a>, I thought I would carry my comment over here and see if there is further discussion.<\/p>\n

I’ve been struggling with the issue for decades on the lack of women in technology.\u00a0\u00a0Even after having risen up to be a Chief Technology Architect of a major Media\/Publishing company I am still being surrounded by mostly\u00a0men.<\/p>\n

I was always interested as a kid in “girly” things, (i.e. knitting, fashion) etc. but I loved solving puzzles and enjoyed math.\u00a0 I wasn’t a geek in school so I don’t think that its really the pink\/blue thing so much as parents who wanted me to do what I enjoyed. I was only one of a few in my high school that went away to college.<\/p>\n

From the very beginning of my technology life in college, I was 1 of 3 women in a class of 25 graduating with a CS degree.\u00a0 I can blame it on the era, since computers were not easily accessible, (i.e. my first computer was a Commodore 64!) but I have a feeling that ratio hasn’t changed too much.<\/p>\n

After school, I continually got pigeon holed into typically female oriented technology roles, (QA, project management) and I had to leave many companies to get recognized for my ability as a programmer\/architect.\u00a0 When I finally built up a reputation as a technology architect, I found that even in a room of architects, I was always one of a few women.\u00a0 This was true regardless of the industry or company I was in.<\/p>\n

Now that I’m even more senior, I run architecture reviews and\u00a0enterprise\u00a0technology\u00a0designs with all male crowds.\u00a0 I hope that these men who recognize me as a technology\u00a0leader can tell their daughters that they can do anything they want too and that perhaps I’ve influenced\u00a0 these men and how they treat their daughters.<\/p>\n

I’m still constantly struggling now that I’ve been hosting Let’s Knit2gether<\/a>, (a knitting show) because it seems like people can’t see an individual who is in technology having interest in things that are stereotypically women’s things.<\/p>\n

We need to break down all gender stereotypes for children, no matter the age.\u00a0 So it’s OK for a boy to wear pink and knit, and it’s OK for a girl to wear blue and play video games.<\/p>\n

Oh and BTW, the first computer programmers were women. Look it up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It all started with this post on Techcrunch\u00a0 Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The\u00a0Men.\u00a0and got more out of hand with\u00a0\u00a0all the responses.\u00a0 When I saw this post from Felicia Day Women in Tech, I thought I would carry my comment over here and see if there is further discussion. I’ve been struggling with … Continue reading Response to Felicia Day – on Women in Tech<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75,"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catsusch.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}